Global demand for whitefish is rising even as wild stocks face increasing pressure and supply chains grow more volatile. Whitefish is a staple protein for billions, yet catches fluctuate, regulatory scrutiny is tightening, and contaminants like mercury and microplastics are persistent problems that consumers and buyers are increasingly wary of.​

Conventional aquaculture helps fill the gap, but it comes with its own constraints: feed costs and availability, disease risk, and localized environmental impacts. The market urgently needs a scalable, clean, and reliable whitefish supply that can hit everyday foodservice price points, not just premium tastings.

Atlantic Fish offers a cultivated alternative that grows real fish muscle cells—without oceans, mercury, or microplastics—in standard stirred-tank bioreactors. The company has developed anchorage-independent muscle cell lines that proliferate and differentiate in true suspension, eliminating the need for costly scaffolds and microcarriers.​

This unlocks high-density growth in off-the-shelf bioreactors with continuous or semi-continuous perfusion, pushing cell and protein yields per liter. The goal is serum-free, food-grade media built on commodity inputs, with recombinant factors driven down to parts-per-million levels. By removing scaffold costs, using standard bioprocess equipment, and intensifying the process, Atlantic Fish shifts the cost stack from artisanal to industrial. First products will target fillet formats that fit how restaurants actually buy and use whitefish today.

Critically, the platform has already been validated across different cell types, including chicken, opening up licensing opportunities that can generate working capital as they scale seafood production.​

— Anthony Bellafiore, Investment Manager at Katapult Ocean

Atlantic Fish sits squarely in a blue-food thesis: high-volume staple proteins produced with lower environmental impact and stronger supply reliability. By decoupling whitefish supply from wild stocks and conventional farming constraints, the company can help reduce pressure on marine ecosystems while providing a stable, predictable source of protein.​

The addressable market spans foodservice, retail private label, and institutional buyers who can also license the technology for their own product lines. As regulatory pathways for cultivated seafood clarify, a cultivated whitefish that can hit cost parity with conventional fillets has the potential to reshape how a core global protein is sourced and served.

We invested because Atlantic Fish is pursuing cultivated seafood with industrial bioprocessing logic: suspension culture, standard tanks, and media economics that map to parity with today’s whitefish. This is seafood priced like seafood, not a permanent premium category.​
Through diligence, there was a clear scale-up roadmap, explicit cost levers tied to measurable milestones, and strong early interest from partners aligned with the initial mince and formed product formats. The team’s suspension-first approach and frugal media design give conviction that they can move beyond pilots into mainstream foodservice and broader markets. 

We’re thrilled to back Atlantic Fish in the 2025 cohort as they turn cultivated whitefish into an everyday, affordable protein. If you’d like to get in touch with the founders to learn more, shoot us a message at ocean@katapult.vc.